


It's High Noon Somewhere

by Querulousgawks



Series: Tumblr Prompts [16]
Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005), Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Firefly Fusion, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 08:10:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11505240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Querulousgawks/pseuds/Querulousgawks
Summary: Logan Echolls is a certified Companion. Weevil Navarro is a smuggler with a heart of gold. Malcolm Reynolds is, frankly, tired of hearing about them.





	It's High Noon Somewhere

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trulyawkwardquestions](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trulyawkwardquestions/gifts).



> Prompted a long time ago by local troublemaker [trulyawkwardquestions](http://archiveofourown.org/users/trulyawkwardquestions/pseuds/trulyawkwardquestions) for the AU headcanons meme, and betaed by the joyous word nerd that is [MimiLaRue](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MimiLaRue/pseuds/MimiLaRue). All mistakes are mine. Thanks to you both!

They’re scavengers, like Mal’s team. Echolls and Navarro are as famous, in certain unhygienic circles, as the _Serenity_ crew, but it’s a different flavor of notoriety. They take riskier jobs, long cons; they run goods and secrets deeper into the central planets. 

Bring up Mal Reynolds in a border bar and folks will know the name: they’ll grin, or sneer, and either way they’ll have a story to tell. A Serenity story can get the whole crowd joining in, whether it’s to challenge the likelihood (“no way the Hero of Canton is on that crew!”) or to compete with a taller tale. (“My ma saw Zoe Alleyn sweep the outer-ring sharpshooter’s circuit, years before the war. She’s the one to watch out for - she’ll be searching your corpse for ration bars while Reynolds is still mouthing off and getting his gun out.”)

Bring up the two-man crew of the _Neptune_ , though, and the room gets…quiet. Navarro was a Browncoat, too, and there were plenty of rumours that espionage cost Echolls his place in the Companion’s Guild. But those stories aren’t good company in a raucous bar. There were uglier battles than Serenity Valley, and soldiers who started out with no innocence to lose - they fought a different war.

People don’t say, “Echolls and Navarro get the job done,” even though it’s true. People sidle away, mostly, and if they murmur anything at all while they’re doing so, its: “pay upfront, and don’t piss them off.” 

Someone bold enough might come up later, though, to share a quiet story, or a word of advice. They’ll say that Echolls isn’t the muscle, officially (no one knows what they are, _officially_ , to each other), but that if he ever joins in a fight it’s wisest to surrender and start negotiating, because he has rage to match Navarro’s and such scars that he won’t feel a blow landed anywhere on his torso. 

But for every story like that, you’ll learn one like this: all across the third quadrant, where Navarro workedwith a full crew before the war, women knew to use the _blessings of Felix_ as code to signal a need for a rescue. Ask for the blessing in prayer for an abusive employer, or a blackmailing lover, and even now the men of the _Neptune_ will wish you peace and then make sure you get it, taking in payment nothing more than a cut of the settlement. 

Or of the inheritance, as the case may be. 

Malcolm Reynolds is aware of the contrast in their reputations, and would like it to be known - would like someone to record it for posterity - that he thinks this is utter bullshit. (“I’ll enter that into the ship log, Cap,” Wash says soothingly, and Mal grumbles a “damn right,” while staring grimly out into the black. The ship’s log is just an automated system file, as Zoe points out later, but Wash reminds her that he keeps notes written on old protein bar wrappers in a box under the nav-dash. The box is labeled: Dumb Shit People Say While I’m Trying To Fly This Boat, so really, the Captain’s comments fit right in.) 

Mal knows where his comments are being recorded like he knows everything else that happens on his ship, thanks, and that’s not even the point he was trying to make. The _point_ is, that unlike _some_ outfits hauling freight and picking fights all over the ‘verse, Mal uses underestimation as a strategy. Plenty of no-fuss folks with no-fuss jobs come looking for a crew that knows how to keep quiet; Mal doesn’t need half the ‘verse whispering about him like he’s a Reaver rumor, just so he can pick up work. The uneasy reputation of the Captain Navarro and his Companion - that is, his pilot who is a Companion, whatever - is just another marketing ruse, a way to make sure petty lordlings like Badger pay up when the job is done. 

Still, Mal likes Weevil. They make sense to each other, and their crews have pulled off some pretty spectacular jobs when they’ve teamed up. There was even a long-term and respectable run skewing the odds in favor of a particular bookie at the Interplanetary Shuttle Races. Sure, Wash and Echolls are banned from that quadrant now, but they’d been paid well, made the Mackenzie Corp happy, and seen some damn pretty racing; more than they’d usually walk away with. Serenity and the Neptune can share the outer planets just fine, provided they space out their Alliance heists and Echolls keeps his mouth shut. Speaking of petty lordlings. 

There’s no power in the ‘verse that can keep Echolls’ mouth shut, so. Mal tries to stick with Weevil.

Of course, Echolls and Inara know each other from way back, from before the war and possibly even from Companion training, which Mal doesn’t even want to think about. (Kaylee’s probably given it some thought.) It doesn’t have any bearing on his difficulty with the guy, of course. They’re all professionals here, and it’s probably good, in terms of shipboard efficiency and morale, for Inara to have somebody on her level to talk to. Somebody who can understand. 

The rest of the Serenity crew likes them both. Jayne’s crush on Logan rivals the one he holds for Kaylee, and manifests the same way, in an unending stream of innuendo and mockery. Zoe and Weevil have some war stories that even Mal doesn’t know, from before she joined his platoon. He thinks Wash has heard them, though. Wash can get along with anybody, but he’s got a particular ease with Weevil that has always seemed edged with gratitude. 

Kaylee, of course, is as comfortable with Weevil and Logan, with all their contradictions, as she is with anyone who’s welcome on Serenity. (It’s an Outworlder gift, Mal thinks, to see a person so clear of the shadows of their past or their stature.) She’s a fan of their stories, the way they rib each other fiercely and direct a more gentle version towards her. She’s maybe a little over-invested in their relationship, if the earful Mal gets whenever they show up on radar is any indication. “A Companion and a thief, it’s just so romantic, you know, Cap? It just shows you that people can make things work, even when the circumstances seem impossible.” He hands her the splicer she’s gesturing dreamily towards, and tries to make his grunted reply non-committal, instead of insulting. 

The problem is, Mal knows too much about the war to see much romance in it. Sometimes people look up from a battle and discover they’re the only two left standing, and yeah, in a case like that, you either leave the field holding onto each other or you’re not likely to leave at all. But loss is a weak engine to build a life around. Mal swears he can see the strain, with those two, even when a job’s done and everyone else is taking their ease. Whatever secondhand parts of memories and desperation they’ve cobbled together, running on the momentum of their own reckless impulses - well, it’s held together so far.

But when it flies apart? He doesn’t even want to be in the same quadrant, much less on the same job.

Inara, talking softly with Logan over Persephone whiskey he’d smuggled into her shuttle, hears the threads of a different story. Of course Logan’s a liar by training, like herself; but the same training taught them to find truth in the warp and weft of all the things that are so much more pleasant to say. In the end, she decides, Mal and Kaylee are both wrong. Logan and Weevil didn’t master a star-crossed destiny, but they weren’t settling for each other, either. They loved the same woman, and she died, and then they loved another woman and she helped them take down an Alliance weapons supplier just before she ditched them in deep space without a word of explanation. And yeah, surviving Lilly and Veronica is probably what brought them together more than being what Jayne calls ‘crime buddies.’ But.

Sometimes (maybe not very often) people who are nothing alike on the outside will still recognize themselves in each other. And once you’ve found that - seen your own reflection, heard your own native language of bravado and calculation and regret - it doesn’t matter that you’re also looking at some bored Companion playing spy, or at a gunrunner with a chip on his shoulder even wider than Sergeant Reynolds’. Once you see _yourself,_ in someone else? You’re never gonna want to look away.

Inara understands.


End file.
